Junkets for baseball junkiesBaseball junkies can savor six...

TRAVEL LOG

March 31, 1991

Junkets for baseball junkies

Baseball junkies can savor six multigame junkets in July and August, promoted by Sports Tours Inc. The trips last four or five days and range from $575 to $695 per person, based on double occupancy, excluding transportation to the trips' point of origin.

Most of the trips include lodging in two cities and four or five pro baseball games. For example, the "California Express" tour features two games in San Francisco's Candlestick Park, one in the Oakland Coliseum, one in San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium and one in Los Angeles' Dodgers Stadium.

More than 300 cases of diphtheria were reported in Moscow during 1990, 18 of them resulting in deaths, according to a Centers for Disease Control advisory. A tetanus-diphtheria booster should be administered when 10 or more years have elapsed since the last diphtheria toxoid-containing booster, the advisory said.

The Moscow cases for 1990 were double the 1989 figures, which health officials attribute to a drop in childhood vaccination levels in recent years.

Caribbean oil spill

The black sand beaches of the Caribbean islands of St. Kitts and Nevis are being despoiled by an oil spill. The Trinidadian barge Vesta Belle was bound for Antigua carrying more than 500,000 gallons of bunker fuel when a towing cable snapped March 6, causing it to sink 12 miles northeast of Nevis.

Varying weather and tidal patterns have been forcing the slowly moving slick -- at one point more than 35 miles long -- alternately to the north and to the west, repeatedly raising and then --ing hopes that its bulk would bypass St. Kitts entirely.

Despite the efforts of a French Navy vessel that has been spraying an oil-dispersing agent at the source of the spill, oil globs have reached shore on both islands.

Beaches on the northeast coast of St. Kitts, from Conaree to Turtle Beach, have had the most significant damage. Globs have also washed ashore near Nisbett Plantation and Newcastle on Nevis.

There is, however, little possibility that the western shores of either island will be adversely affected.

A U.S. Coast Guard spokesman cited warm temperatures and steady winds as aiding in the evaporation of the slick, and said the oil globs had been sticking to seaweed on the shore, making it possible "to clean entire beaches in a day or two."

The prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, Kennedy A. Simmonds, requested technical help and manpower from France, Venezuela and the United States in the effort to clean up the spill. The Coast Guard has responded by sending Lt. Edwin Stanton of its environmental disaster strike team as a consultant. Lieutenant Stanton's initial assessment was that "damage to the beaches is minimal."

Renovation at Stonehenge

The keepers of Stonehenge are planning a renovation of the site to bring England's most famous prehistoric monument back to nature.

An estimated $18 million will be spent on closing the nearby road and removing the parking lot and visitors' center, officials say. New facilities will be built farther from the site and visitors will approach Stonehenge on foot.

On March 22 the National Trust, a private charity group, agreed ** to work with English Heritage, the government agency, in drawing up plans for the renovation of the site 85 miles west of London.

English Heritage is responsible for the great circle of standing stones visited by about a million people annually. The National Trust owns much of the rolling hills around the site, believed to have had religious or astronomical significance.

Price reductions for tourists' accommodations and meals in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan have been announced by the government.

All-inclusive rates for accommodations, food, guides and transportation have been dropped to $220 in the peak months of April and October for visitors staying in hotels.

HTC Lodges now cost about $150 a day and campsites $120 to $130. In March, May, July, August, September and November, rates range from $175 for hotels to $100 to $120 for campers. Low-season rates for January, February, June and December will be $130 for hotels and $80 to $90 for campsites, with lodges only slightly higher.

While most monasteries will remain closed to foreigners, tourists may be admitted to certain festivals held in monastic-fortress compounds called dzongs.